A beautiful, mountainous landscape of Szczyrk, Poland held the 7th edition of PyConPL, a conference for Python programmers. It's become a regular event in a Polish pythonista's calendar, and still holds its well-deserved reputation of hopeless mediocrity. This year its corporate sponsorship became plainly visible - if not aggressive, not even trying to pretend it's not about hiring.

It certainly didn't hold to any international standards, even with the most basic aspect: language of the talks. Even though about 30% of the attendees didn't speak Polish, nearly half of the talks and workshops weren't held in English. What could pass in a strictly local meetup, such as Code Carrots or even PyWaw shouldn't have taken place on a nation-wide conference with a lot of English speakers invited.

The absurdity of such decision may be best summarized by the opening talk, where one of the organisers stated:

I'm honoured to welcome you to the PyConPL! Yet, since it's a Polish conference, I will hold the rest of my speech in Polish...